"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." Orwell

"Men are so simple of mind and so dominated by immediate needs that the deceitful man can easily find those ready to be deceived."
Machiavelli

"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.." H.L. Mencken

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Sunday Column

In my latest column for our local newspaper I discuss conservative icon and intellectual powerhouse, Michele Bachmann, soon to leave the national stage, on the run.

Except for the entertainment, I don’t plan to miss Michele
Bachmann. Besides, whatever amusement there might have been in her national presence,
it was more than offset by the dispiriting horror of it. She epitomizes, after
all, the contemptuous intellectual descent of today’s Republican party. Sure,
her district is gerrymandered to select for her special kind of insanity; even
so, it’s a national embarrassment that a person like her was seriously
considered, by enough people in a major party to make it more than a fluke, to
be of presidential caliber. But then, so were Ricks Perry and Santorum. And the
abstruse Alaskan.

God told her to do things, she liked to proclaim. Yet she
was uncharacteristically silent about His role in her decision to flee, FEC
nipping at her nose; or the polls suggesting she was looking a little toasty.
If God really did talk her into running in the first place, I’m guessing it was
preceded by crooking His finger at His buddies up there, like Tom Jefferson,
MLK, FDR, Harriet Tubman, George Carlin, and saying, “Checketh it out, guys.
This is gonna be grins.”

Bachmann animated, like Dr. Frankenstein did his more
attractive monster, that remarkable stitchery of disinformation, paranoia, and
demagoguery that typifies today’s Republican leaders. I was never sure if she
believed the stuff she said: reeducation camps, HPV vaccine causing mental
retardation, Founding Fathers ending slavery, Obama surrendering US legal
tender to some imaginary international currency. Clearly, she has the
unconstrained zeal of the completely credulous. On the other hand, it’s exactly
the steaming bilge her followers loved to hear, and she shoveled it out there
for them with enthusiasm. Dumb like the Fox?

She’ll remain a hero in her party, one gone so bonkers that
its leaders refer to the nomination of judges to fill existing federal
vacancies as an attempt to “pack the courts.” A party whose ophidian Senate
leader claims, as his case is falling apart, that it’s “an assault on free
speech” when the IRS ensures that political groups act within the law. As their
avatar, Michele Bachmann perfectly personifies the fear and division, the
running from reality and hiding in the land of nyctophobic fantasy in which her
party has proudly pitched its doorless tent.

If I’ve learned anything in these few months of columny,
it’s that a mind like Michele’s can’t be changed. It was made up before any
facts got in, slammed shut as she hid under her bed. Same with certain readers
I hear from, who send me apocalyptic claims ripped from right-wing radio and
TV, or from emails they’ve received, the kind that begin with “If you do
nothing else today, read this and pass it on…” Stuff so obviously false that
you’d be embarrassed to have your name on the forwarding. Stuff that’s been
around since John Roberts flubbed the oath, and which has been debunked
repeatedly. Rampant voter fraud. Shocking growth of government. Rising deficits,
Obamacare for illegals, Sharia law for everyone. I’ve sent links to impartial
articles, charts, and graphs, asked them to support their assertions, specify anything
that confirms their certainty in President Obama’s hatred of capitalist America.
No takers. The more information I’ve furnished, the more forcefully they flung
their Foxified fallacies. It’s one thing to disagree; but this is manifest
preference for being wrong; the clearer the disproof of their beliefs, the
tighter they hold them, like Linus and his blanket.

Easier than proposing
workable alternatives, conspiracy theories are all they have. Michele Bachmann
passed zero legislation; but, oh, the stories she told.I don’t know why some people prefer delusion over actuality;
but it explains how reprobates like Bachmann get elected, and it illuminates
our biggest problem: when times are tough, the untough prefer untruth. Reality,
for Bachmann-empowering types, seems to have become intolerable; “La la la I
can’t hear you” worked when they were kids, and what carefree times those were!
Washington’s own state legislator, Ed Orcutt, claimed bicycles are more
polluting than cars. He’s also the guy, responding to a request to fund
upgrading bridges after the Mt. Vernon collapse, who pointed out that eleven of
its twelve sections are still standing. Such thinking doesn’t portend thoughtful
legislation.

So, no, I won’t miss the lady. I wish I could believe her
exit augurs a return to the real world by her party, but I don’t, not for a
minute. Because, as Yoda reminded Obi-wan, “There is another.” And another. And
another.

Note: due to an error by the paper, this isn't the column that appeared. Oh well. Sadly the one they published was one I sent in before it was ready. Crap, in other words.

For The Sake of My Sanity

Some will know me from my other blog, "Surgeonsblog." Of late I've given over to frothing at the mouth as the world descends into stupidity, and our politics and our citizens seem, in numbers enough to be meaningful, unable to see it. So for now I'm leaving surgery writing behind, if for no other reason than to defuse and diffuse my unrelenting sense of doom, and with no expectation of making a difference. These are things that, to me, are obvious. Except that, apparently, they aren't.

RWS™

RWS™: For those who drop by here in the middle, and wonder what it means: it's my shorthand for Right Wing Screamers, which includes such a long list it's tiresome to type it. (I distinguish these blowhards from thoughtful conservatives, of whom I sort of take it on faith that there must still be some.) You know who I mean: Palin, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Breitbart (RIP), Malkin, Savage, Levin, Ingraham, Doocey (more of a drooler than a screamer), Hewitt, Goldberg, Gingrich, Kristol, Scarborough (+/-), Bachmann, Inhofe, Bond, Broun, Boehner, Kelley, Santorum, Cain. To name but a few. Behold them in their unrepentant disregard for reality: the RWS™